


Rooted in Friendship

by alienqueequeg



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Masturbation, The Rain King, bed sharing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-10
Updated: 2018-07-10
Packaged: 2019-06-08 13:10:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15244092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alienqueequeg/pseuds/alienqueequeg
Summary: Just some sexy room sharing cuddle angst set during The Rain King





	Rooted in Friendship

She startled awake as the credits rolled on the nature documentary running on the television. She felt warm, warmer than she was used to feeling and it took her a few solid, disoriented moments until she realized that her cheek was pressed against the solid meat of her partner’s shoulder above the crook of her armpit. She rubbed her lips together, mortified at the prospect of having drooled on him.

How long could she have been asleep? She remembered they were watching the strange mating dances of rainforest birds when she started to feel the drowsiness set in.

She should move. She realized this. But she couldn’t bring herself to pry her cheek away from the heat of his shoulder. She could feel his breathing, the faint thrum of his heartbeat. She felt like she was where she belonged to be, even though intellectually her mind was chastising her for all the myriad ways this was wrong. The worst thought being he was extremely uncomfortable with their current situation and a trip to HR was in her future when they returned to Washington. She felt a little dirty for lingering, like she was copping a feel.

Then she felt his lips on the crown of her head. They stayed there, pressed into her hair. She could feel his breath tickle her scalp as he inhaled, and the heat that spread over her head as he breathed out.

He was smelling her hair. Lingering. He pressed a kiss to her head and sighed. It sounded equal parts contented and sad.

This was their dance. Testing the boundaries of what could be considered friendship without doing something that forced them to confront the reality of their relationship with words.

If she stirred now, they might have to talk about the gesture he just made. If she waited until they both had plausible deniability, they could keep up the dance.

She wasn’t brave enough to stop the dance. But she wanted to stay here, pressed against his warm skin, feeling the aliveness of his body. Her skin lighting up in response, pinging out to him.

She waited until he moved to grab the remote control, his movement giving an excuse for her show of sudden wakefulness.

“Sorry,” she said, bashful. Her cheek was still on fire as she lifted her face, looked away from him.

“It’s okay,” he replied, a hint of a smile on his lips, his voice a little softer than usual.

“It was late and I just—”

“It’s okay,” he repeated. “You can, uh, keep, there…” He trailed off, gesturing to the spot on his body where she had rested her head.

“Yeah?” she asked. She smiled and then cursed herself. Smiling made her feel vulnerable.

“Yeah,” he replied, his voice a little hoarse.

She had been expecting some kind of smart ass response, but he seemed unusually monosyllabic tonight.

She squirmed a little closer to him and rested her head on his chest, closer than she had been before. He wrapped an arm around her and drew her flush against him.

“Is this okay?” His voice was breathless.

She took the opportunity to nod against him, which drew her cheek down against his pec muscle and gave her a new full breath of his scent.

This was not the first time they had done this, but it was the first time when they were not processing a very recent trauma. There was the night after Donnie Pfaster. She didn’t want to sleep alone and he didn’t want her to sleep alone and she let herself be held. He pretended he didn’t hear her crying because he knew that’s what she would want. He squeezed her closer anyway.

That night in Florida chasing Moth Men. He had been wounded and the way she stroked him, almost maternal, could be chalked up to her tending his injuries. They did that a lot. It was her bad habit, and she knew that he enabled it.

She could feel that he was touch starved too. The darker part of her mind told her that how he touched her back, how he let her touch him, was just a reflection of how he would allow anyone to touch him given the chance, lonely bachelor that he is.

It happened most recently after the Christmas Eve haunted house. “You need to get at least a couple hours of shut-eye before you see your family tomorrow,” he had told her. “If resting against a warm body would help.” He opened his arms to welcome her but gave her a crooked grin. Plausible deniability.

She chuckled at his awkwardness and curled into the fetal position on the couch, resting her head against his thigh. She thought he was startled she chose to rest against him that way, felt him shift his legs. She wondered if it would arouse him and decided that she didn’t care if it did. She fell asleep instantly, curled up against him, and he pet her the way she did when they were back in Florida.

She felt a warmth spread through her body then. When she woke up, he was still wide awake. She wondered if he had watched her sleep that entire time. The TV was muted with subtitles. She gave him a tense smile, ran her fingers through her hair to tame it and hurried to get ready for her family. She was not ready to talk about the intimacy of that night and her left cheek, the one that had been resting against his thigh, was noticeably pink.

She was overstimulated and she ran back to the noisy distraction of her family. She went back to work and they pretended it never happened.

She pursed her lips and gave his chest the faintest of kisses, brushing her lips against the fabric of his shirt.

“Hey Scully?”

“Hmm?”

“Can I ask you a weird question?”

“I suppose…” Her eyes flashed up but she could only see the bottom of his chin. She watched the muscles in his jaw work.

“Why do you wear this pajama sets like this? Are they actually comfortable?” He pinched at the sleeve of her satin button down. She was glad she had chosen a bra with a bit of padding today because she could feel her nipples harden.

She chuckled. “Honestly, Mulder? I’m really more of a oversize t-shirt girl but I learned early on that when you wake up at random in the middle of the night, it’s helpful to be pretty much fully dressed.”

That made her a little sad when she said it out loud. It might have made him a little sad too because neither of them said anything for a long moment.

“Wait a minute,” she said. “Are you wearing slacks right now?” She giggled and pushed her foot against the fabric of his pants. “Do you always wear slacks to bed?”

She pulled away from his chest to get a good look at him. She could see a faint blush on his cheeks and at the base of his neck.

“I wasn’t expecting to share a bed.”

“So you didn’t bring your own two piece pajama set.” She poked playfully at a rib.

“Afraid not.”

“How do you usually sleep?” She was emboldened by this conversation, by the feeling of their bodies so close together in the bed.

“Boxers, usually,” he mumbled. “And t-shirt.”

“You can take off your slacks to sleep,” she laughed.

As he started working the buttons on his slacks and she turned away to face the wall, her smile fell. A moment of levity that had felt so deliciously like pillow talk. She ached for that feeling of peace and relaxation, of feeling perfectly sated. And she hated herself for not being able to rid herself of these thoughts.

Not long ago, she had confessed these feelings to a priest. She told him about some of the morally ambiguous things she had had to do as an agent; that list was plentiful. And it slipped out that she was having impure thoughts, distracting ones. The priest pushed for the identity of the person she was thinking about and she eventually admitted it was her partner. Her mind flashed through the familiar Rolodex of fantasies, mostly involving the office chair or being bent over the desk but sometimes in the car on a long ride through midwest flatlands. Motel beds and motel showers and motel hot tubs. A thousand ways she wanted to take and be taken. She gave the priest the PG-rated version.

She had tried distracting herself. A string of one-night stands and the occasional fuck buddy if she was lucky. It wasn’t hard for her to find partners, but casual sex had diminishing returns. She felt a distance between them. She felt a similar distance she felt when she was with her partner, in the opposite way. She lost interest and told herself it was because she was wrapped up in her work. She was good at making herself believe stuff like that.

Behind her she heard Mulder shuffle back under the covers having discarded his pants. She followed suit and got back under the covers, facing away from him.

“I have to warn you,” he said in a low voice. “I am a very cuddly sleeper.”

“What does that mean?” she raised an eyebrow at him as she looked back over her shoulder.

“It means I apologize in advance for any untoward behavior from my unconscious self.”

“Oh.” She sucked on her lips. “What are we talking about here?”

Just as she hoped he would, he reaches over and wraps his arms around her. Even though his chest is pressed firmly into her back and his head is curled over hers, she can feel him angling his hips away from her. She rocks her hips back until she feels his arousal, most likely half the reason he had opted to leave his pants on in the first place.

She gasped as she felt it, drunk on the contact. She backed away and immediately started overanalyzing how her reaction would read to him. Did she seem scared? She had the distinct impression that if she was perceived to have recoiled from his erection, he would take it to heart and never make a move for as long as they would know each other.

Make a move. Sometimes she cursed herself for not taking the first step. She supposed it was all part of their dance too. She ignored his flirting until she started flirting and then he ignored hers. She took in his heartfelt expressions of love and devotion with silence. She wasn’t exactly sure why she needed him to be the one to seal the deal, so to speak. She just knew she couldn’t be the one to make the first move. She froze every time, feeling about as small as she ever felt.

She needed to lighten the moment, she needed to get him out of his head. She wriggled against his arms as though trying to escape. Understanding her game immediately, in the way he anticipated her movements in the field, he squeezed her tight. She responded by giving him a “noooo” and squirming against him.

They relaxed in each other’s arms and breathed deeply.

“Scully?”

“Yes?” She rolled over to face him. Their faces were almost touching and she could smell the toothpaste on his breath and a hint of cheap motel soap. She never noticed that he always smelled a little bit like cheap motel soap. She wondered if he stole spare soaps from hotel rooms and that’s what he used in his shower at him. She became immediately convinced that was the case and resolved to peek in his shower next time she was at his apartment.

His eyes were soft and full of something she couldn’t quite place. She could feel goosebumps raise on her arm. He moved his hand from her arm to push a stray strand of hair out of her eyes. The tiny hairs at the nape of her neck raised. Her doctor mind ran through her symptoms: increased heart rate, flushed skin, the persistent pulsing between her legs.

“Nothing,” he sighed. “This is just…nice.”

“Yes it is, Mulder.”

He gave her a sad smile and abruptly got up. He moved to the bathroom, keeping his back to her. She was pretty sure she knew why. She let out a long sigh as the door closed and when the sink water started running, she wasted no time. She pulled her knees up to create a little tent in the sheets and plunged her fingers down her pajama bottoms. She was shocked at her own prurient wetness. She felt a twinge of Catholic shame, which only turned her on more (those wires had crossed long ago and she had learned to embrace it). As the water ran in the bathroom, she made hasty work of rubbing herself. It took her less than a minute before she was bucking up against the sheets, biting into the fabric to stifle her moans. The flood of endorphins took her aback and she was lightheaded as she sank back into the sheets.

She heard the water in the bathroom turn off and a sheepish, slightly pink Mulder came out.

“Want a beer from the mini fridge?” he offered.

“I’d love nothing more,” she lied.

* * *

 

It wasn’t a year later before she told him her recollections of that night. They were driving to their hotel room in preparation for a new case the next morning, playing their new game. In an effort to kill time in the long, late night drives they would tell each other all their dirty thoughts they had from before they became a real couple. The tension would build in the car, sometimes resulting in pulling off to the side of the road and rutting like teenagers in the backseat.

Usually they made it to the hotel room but they didn’t make it to the bed. He would have her up against the door of the motel as soon as it closed, their bodies equally eager and ready.

Cases were for quickies. Weekends were their languid, naked afternoons, tracing their fingers over each other’s bodies. Teasing each other for hours.

They would tell each other stories then, too.

 


End file.
